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Updated: May 11, 2026

Assembly and Characterization of Polyelectrolyte Complex Micelles
Published on: March 2, 2020
Polysaccharide-hair cationic polypeptide nanogels: self-assembly and enzymatic polymerization of amylose
Nobuyuki Morimoto1, Mio Yamazaki, Junko Tamada
1Department of Materials Processing, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Japan.
Abstract:
In this study, we prepared a new associating polymer, ChMaPLL, by the substitution of the poly(L-lysine) moiety with oligosaccharide amylose primer and cholesterol. ChMaPLL formed positively charged polypeptide nanogels (~50 nm) via self-assembly in water. The nanogels showed a secondary structural transition to an α-helix structure induced by poly(L-lysine) in response to an increase in pH. Oligosaccharides of the nanogels reacted with the phosphorylase a enzyme. Amylose-conjugated nanogels were obtained by enzymatic polymerization. The elongation of the saccharide chain shielded the positive charge of the nanogels. The multiresponsive polysaccharide-polypeptide hybrid nanogels might prove to be useful in the areas of biotechnology and biomedicine.

